Creatively exploring intimacy and relationship success

We seek secure attachment

As human’s we are hardwired to seek secure attachment and our brains have evolved to interpret insecurity and rejection as a form of danger. We are neurologically primed to avoid rejection.

Even the feeling of being pushed away or indeed pushing our partner away is driven by a primitive fear of loss of attachment. The process itself becomes the force to be reckoned with.

Today, love is no longer a mystery and years of research have led to an understanding of love as a biological as well as an emotional experience so it can be worked with clinically.

A key feature of couples work is often about appreciating that the problem is the dance we are caught in rather than either party being inherently wrong or inadequate. This is an important place to start with in relationship therapy.

I'm OK, You're OK

My training in Transactional Analysis offers an approach to working with couples in a frame of ‘I’m OK, You’re OK’ thinking that focuses on working to explore the history they bring to the relationship, the dynamics playing out in the ‘here and now’ and the skills to step back from conflicts and understand what is really happening in the relationship at the conscious and unconscious level.

I also use evidence-based techniques from leading approaches to couples therapy including emotionally focused couples therapy and techniques from the Gottman Institute.

What is involved in relationship therapy?

Gaining an understanding historical attachment patterns and how they play out today

Understanding that conscious acts can be informed by unconscious, unprocessed experiences

Work on the joys and challenges of attachment, connection and intimacy

Appreciating how our family histories and models of relationships affect us today

Looking at games being played out in the relationship, how to stop them, and how to understand where they come from

Learning more effective communication skills and conflict management

Appreciating the neuroscience of relating and what gets activated in deep connection and fear of loss

Learning how to support each other empathically and genuinely

Working with personal boundaries and how to put them in place

Being realistic about staying together or ending the relationship and taking the next steps

Much of the work of couple’s therapy with me is about reestablishing a secure attachment relationship something that is within the reach of most couples committed to the process.

Please feel free to contact me to discuss a consultation and set a course for making lasting changes in your relationship.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.